MENOCCHIO,
Domenico Scandella (1532–1599), a miller from Montereale, Italy,
delated, probably by his parish priest to the Inquisition.
He surprised and scandalized residents of his village by frequently proclaiming
his unusual beliefs. First tried for heresy in 1583, he
abjured his statements in 1584, but spent another 20 months in prison inConcordia.
Released in 1586, he claimed to have reformed. He continued to be in house
arrest and had to wear a sign of a burning cross on his garments as a visible
sign of his crimes. In 1598, he was arrested again as a lapsedheretic,
having continued to speak to many people about his beliefs. In 1599, he was
burnt at the
stake for heresy in 1599. His life and beliefs are known from the Inquisition
records, and has been the subject of the book The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg

During his trial,
he argued that the only sin was to harm one’s neighbor and that toblasphemecaused
no harm to anyone but the blasphemer. He went so far as to say that
Jesuswas
born of man andMarywas
not a virgin, that thePopehad
no power given to him from God but simply exemplified the qualities of a good
man, and that Christ had not died to redeem
humanity

Menocchio said:

“I have said that, in my opinion, all was chaos, that is, earth,
air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed –
just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were
the angels. The most holy majesty decreed that these should be God and the
angels, and among that number of angels there was also God, he too having been
created out of that mass at the same time, and he was named lord with four
captains, Lucifer, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. That Lucifer sought to make
himself lord equal to the king, who was the majesty of God, and for this
arrogance God ordered him driven out of heaven with all his host and his
company; and this God later created Adam and Eve and people in great number to
take the places of the angels who had been expelled. And as this multitude did
not follow God’s commandments, he sent his Son, whom the Jews seized, and he was
crucified.”

During his trial testimony he
referred to more than a dozen books he had read and shared with others, including:

the Bible,

Boccaccio’s Decameron

Mandeville’s Travels,

Jacopo da Voragine,
The Golden Legendand possibly the Koran

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